Childhood Memory of our Cottage House


I woke up to the bright light coming through the pink curtains of this small room we called "veranda". English meaning "the porch". The room in our deep wine-red cottage house where pink roses grow up the wooden wall.

It was meant to be an open porch for sitting and looking at the nightly sky, or drinking cold tea in the afternoon. But 'cause of my grandfathers creativity, it became an additional room. A room in which I slept in.

The house itself was small. The livingroom was also my grandpas bedroom. We had a black-and-white old-school TV in there, which was placed on top of the fireplace and showed only one channel.

We had a built-in sauna, which is common for Estonian houses. But instead of using it for its real purpose, my grandmother stored her dried herbs and plants in there. She loves the nature. And she loves walking in the forest. Every bird in the forest has it's own song to sing and she knows probably of them all. 

We say that if the swallows come to nest to your house, it means good luck. We must of had it a lot, because almost every year the swallows came to build their nest above our front door. They had baby birds watching over our house door, tweaking all day for the new bird parents to bring them food. And it was amazing to see how both parents of the young chicks were working and flying all day to bring warms and little bugs to their young ones who couldn't fly yet.

 My room was facing towards the East, so every morning when the sun rose, it heated up the space quickly. When the sun didn't let me sleep anymore, I opened up the wooden door and went barefoot to the grass which was still wet from the morning dew. I watched the morning sun rising, while sitting on the metal swing and singing few songs which I made up myself for welcoming the sun.

For breakfast, we had this thing called "outdoor restaurant". We moved the garden table outside, covered it with linen and placed the chairs from our small kitchen next to it. Then we brought out bowls of semolina pudding with fresh strawberries on top. I drank coffee from a very young age, with mainly consisted of 1/4 of coffee and rest of the cup I filled with milk. And my sweetest grandmother secretly fed our dog Jonny, who was always sitting under the dining table, with some goods from our breakfast table. 

However, the most important place in the whole house for me was The Attic. You had to climb up from the staircase placed diagonally above the kitchen table, to get there. It was the place of hidden treasures. You could find old shopping bags and newspapers written with old letters I couldn't understand. And one corner was filled with empty bottles and jars, where me and my cousins played "a shop" or "the doctors' office". In the drawers of the writing desk you could find old Soviet Union time make-up like bright pink blushes and dark red lipsticks. And from the window, you could see the dark-blue sea with ships sailing back and forth from the port located in the other side.

 I will never forget that wooden deep-red house, where bushes of bright red and pink roses are growing up on one side of the houses wall. A tiny house with our little garden filled with all kinds of berries, fruits and flowers.


Kisses, 
Mariliis

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